As I watched the snow fall yesterday, I was awed by how spectacularly beautiful it was; and my little girl was too. She said to me in fact, after she asked me if I thought God was letting it snow it again just because he knew how much she didn’t want to school, “Oh, Mom, doesn’t it look just like Narnia?!” Yes, she too is a big fan of C.S. Lewis, as her father and I read through the Narnia series (all seven books) with her when we were homeschooling. Her comment then prompted me to ponder the paradox of winter.
It can be beautiful, and it can be dangerous. It can make us feel crazy free, and it make us feel crazy confined. It can be accompanied by hot chocolate as well as by numb fingers and toes. Like most things in life, it’s a mix; and as such it does not “fit” easily into any one place or category. And it can conjure up a very different image and emotion, depending upon the person into whose ear “winter” is whispered.
This winter is, in fact, an awful lot like us–you don’t know what to expect next. As I type, we are waiting for yet another “storm.” And the last two days the call saying that the school was not going to open after all came just as we were walking out the door fully dressed with book-bag and lunch all packed and in hand. I’m finding that, even with all the breaks we’ve had over the past couple of weeks, it’s hard for me to really relax when I don’t know what’s coming next. The thing is though, winter or not, we never really do know what’s coming next. We just forget, amidst our daily routines and assumptions, how little we actually do know.
And this thought brings me back to one of the greatest comforts of knowing our God–knowing that he does know. The days we’d miss this week, the ones we’ve yet to miss, the flakes that have fallen, the ones that are forthcoming…..the domino effect of it all, he indeed knows. I even, and perhaps even especially, find comfort in knowing that he foreknows those domino effects that are most unpleasant. He’s in all of it. That’s who/how friends are. They share things. I think there’s a certain shallowness to relationships when we share only the “good” with someone; and there’s a certain heaviness when we share only the “bad.” Healthy, “real” relationships encompass both, taking it all in and choosing to move through it all together. And that’s how it is with God. He is our most “real” friend, the truest one we shall ever have.
One of the tricks of Narnia’s white witch was the lie that, if you were on her side, there was only good in her kingdom; and she “proved” this by appealing to Edmund’s sense of taste/smell and indulging him with delectable Turkish delight. He believed her in an instant yet never tasted sweetness from her frigid, white hand again. God should never be discounted because this world is such a cold mess sometimes; just like in Narnia, in the midst of an endless winter it’s God’s eternal warmth that keeps a sense of hope alive and that will eventually melt every sharp, icy edge we’ve ever been cut by. God does win in the end, and so do those who love him. The last battle simply has not yet been played out in time as we know it.
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